Sunday, 4 March 2012

Here be chickens ... ...

We have chickens ! which you will already know if you read my wife's blog, if you don't, you can read the ' New arrivals ' post she wrote - new arrivals (opens in new window)

It has been a hectic few days, but we are all sorted now, we got the chickens on Thursday and I've already changed their housing a little, despite my frantic wood working for the last day or two the chickens seem to be settling in quite well, two of them will already eat from our hands, one is not so brave as yet.

After watching the birds in their run and coop we decided that as we have space we should give them some more, what they had was okay, but as they get bigger it might have been a touch on the small side, so I've added an extra few feet to the run, which they seem to be quite happy about.

This is what it was like -

It's a little bigger now.

It is now some what larger, which has to be a good thing, and once the chickens are used to us and we are used to them we'll start letting them out into the larger area, I just need to patch the fences up first.

The revised run area -

It now has a door as well, makes life easier.

As you can see we've just added a new section to it all, and it still detaches from the other sections, which hopefully means it's still easy to move about if need be.

The door is a new addition as well, as yet the chickens are not quite used to going into the coop at bedtime, so one of us has to get into the run and help them to bed, although they seem to be very keen on corn, so we've been trying to bribe them, which works on two of them.

The door -

I need to touch up the paintwork.

The other thing I've done is to hang the feeder and their water from the underside of the coop, this doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest, but it will stop the birds perching on top of the feeders.

The feeder and water supply -

Just the right height for a chicken.

And that's about it, all in all it's been a good few days, if not a touch busy, but it's worth it, the kids are enjoying the chickens, my daughter was over the moon yesterday when she fed one of the chickens from her hand, much squealing.

I'll leave you with some pictures of the ladies, taken by my wife.

Zelda (a Bluebelle) -

The boss.

Dotty (a Speckledy) -

Will do anything for corn.

Ginger (an Amber ranger) -

Also loves corn.

And it seems not only does our coop and run make a good home for chickens, it's also a good spot to sun yourself, if you are a cat that is.